Contents

Career

Radio

Greig has had a long-running part as Debbie Aldridge in the BBC Radio 4soap operaThe Archers since 1991. Due to her other work she is not in the show all the time and her character Debbie spends most of her time living in Hungary.

Greig is also known for her comedy roles. She later guest-starred in five episodes of the second series in the radio version of Absolute Power, playing Gayle Shand, a rival to Prentiss McCabe and Charles Prentiss's former lover. Her comedy roles do pose problems for Greig, who has admitted that she has problems with corpsing.[2]

Television

One of Greig's first television appearances was in an insurance advert three weeks before giving birth to her first son.[3]

Greig subsequently appeared in a number of supporting parts, notably as Lamia in Neverwhere (1996) and The Mother in an episode of People Like Us (2000). Her first major role was Fran Katzenjammer in the sitcomBlack Books in 2000, a neurotic who owned "Nifty Gifty", a sort of new-age gift shop. She became unemployed in the first series and eventually became worse at everything she tried as the series went on. Several later roles depict similar characters. In 2004, she had a small part in the movie Shaun of the Dead with Dylan Moran, who also appeared in Black Books. In 2005 she appeared as a nurse in an episode of the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who entitled "The Long Game", which also featured Simon Pegg, the writer and star of Shaun of the Dead.

She starred in the BBC comedy drama series Love Soup (2005), as Alice Chenery, a lovelorn woman working on a department store perfume counter, in a role specifically written for her by David Renwick, whom she met in 2003 when she appeared in an episode of Jonathan Creek.[5]

Theatre

During 2006 and early 2007 Greig played Beatrice in a much acclaimed production of Much Ado About Nothing for which she won a Laurence Olivier Award,[7] and Constance in King John, as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's The Complete Works season. Whilst the win itself was a surprise,[8] her acceptance speech was received very well as being highly entertaining,[9] claiming that she was so excited that she had wet her dress. To make it worse, the dress was hired. The speech was apparently completely improvised - Greig hadn't prepared anything. Backstage, when told not to tell her mother about her wetting her dress, she told the host that her mum was dead before dedicating her award to her 'dead mum'.[10] She also won the Critics' Circle Theatre Award for "Best Shakespearean Performance" in Much Ado About Nothing, becoming the first woman to win the award,[11] and was nominated for "The FRANCO'S Best Actress in a Play" in the Whatsonstage Theatregoers' Choice Awards.[12][13]

She is married to actor Richard Leaf, whom she met on the set of Neil Gaiman's 1996 miniseries Neverwhere, and has three children (two sons aged nine and seven, and a three-year-old daughter).[14] The children's names have not been publicised, but their middle names all begin with "Z", and are sometimes comically referred to as "Leaflets".[21] She has previously admitted that she is somewhat embarrassed by the marriage because, "It suddenly hit me one day: after we're married I'll be called Mrs T Leaf!"[22] Before she became a mother, she was keen on parachuting and trampolining.[23][24] She has stated that she is often mistaken for Sharleen Spiteri, the lead singer of the band Texas, for the impressionistRonni Ancona, for comedian Sue Perkins and is even sometimes mistaken for a man.[21]

Little is known about Greig's political views, but when one review by Charlie Spencer in The Telegraph described her (in her role as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing) as "not exactly beautiful, a little like Edwina Currie", she refused to read on.[25][26] It is known that she is a supporter of the National Health Service, giving her backing to a rally organised by pro-NHS protest group NHS Together.[27] She also supports more practical teaching of Shakespeare in British schools, supporting the RSC's "Stand Up For Shakespeare" manifesto.[28]